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Secret Videos Aired in Jersey City Corruption Trial

NEWARK — To understand the irrepressible oiliness of Solomon Dwek, one need only know this: as a young religious school student, he once paid his math teacher a $50 bribe for a passing grade.

Here is a man of endless miscreancy and criminal chutzpah: He once rigged a fund-raising auction at his own yeshiva on the Jersey Shore. He once tried to pass a bad check for $25 million at the drive-through window of a PNC bank branch. He has — by his own admission — lied, stolen, cheated, swindled dozens of investors in a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme. Among the victims: his uncle.

Mr. Dwek, a 37-year-old former real-estate developer, has testified to these talents, and on Friday he again put them in the service of the government, appearing as the star witness in the first federal trial related to an epic case — even for New Jersey — of public corruption, money laundering and, yes, the underground trafficking in human organs.

Working under the alias David Esenbach and equipped with a government recording device, Mr. Dwek secretly taped hundreds of conversations with New Jersey politicians in steakhouses, luncheonettes and diners, resulting in July in charges against 44 defendants — including three mayors, two assemblymen and a handful of rabbis.

His appearance on the stand this week in United States District Court in Newark came in the trial of Leona Beldini, a 74-year-old former burlesque dancer who was, until her arrest, the deputy mayor of Jersey City. Ms. Beldini, whose telephones often made use of Johnny Cash hold music, stands accused of receiving from Mr. Dwek a $20,000 bribe in exchange for promising to help him secure permits for a luxury condominium building he wanted to erect on Garfield Avenue in Jersey City.

Most of Mr. Dwek’s testimony Friday was spent annotating for the jury the numerous videos he made of Ms. Beldini and other state politicos, among them Jack Shaw, a Jersey City political consultant, and Jerramiah T. Healy, the mayor of Jersey City. These were shaky black-and-white clips that showed the principals in restaurants like the Chart House in Weehawken — often with Mr. Dwek buttering a roll in the foreground as the stray arm of a waiter entered the frame.

In one clip, from last February, Mr. Shaw, who is from Chicago, can be heard musing about Jersey City, “This is the only place in the country I have found to be like Cook County.” He tells Mr. Dwek that he will sit down that very weekend with “Leona” to talk about “contributions.” Mr. Dwek says, “Call it what you will.”

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A few weeks later, in March, Mr. Dwek, again on tape, asks Mr. Shaw, “What do you think is a good number to go in for?” to which Mr. Shaw answers, “Right now, I think, 10.” Mr. Dwek told the jury that this was a bribe for $10,000 meant to expedite his building project, adding later that he was “very happy” to have Ms. Beldini — “the second most powerful person in Jersey City under the mayor” — on his payroll.

Ms. Beldini has denied the charges, but prosecutors contend that Mr. Dwek, a small man with thick cheeks and a consistently knitted brow, funneled money to her through Mr. Shaw and Edward Cheatam, a former Jersey City official, in small separate payments designed to skirt election laws. That money eventually wound up in Mr. Healy’s re-election campaign, according to court papers, though Mr. Healy was never charged in the case.

He does, however, appear in Mr. Dwek’s videos, one of them made at the Jersey City Medical Center luncheonette, and it suggests how real-estate deals get done in Jersey City. Arriving late, the mayor asks Mr. Dwek’s name and, on receiving his alias, spells it out loud, wondering curiously if it’s German. Mr. Dwek drones on about zoning variances and the price per square foot at his project. Mr. Healy says he always likes to give “a smooth passage” to investors in his city and then shakes an inordinate amount of pepper onto his lunch.

When he leaves, Mr. Dwek corners Ms. Beldini, who was also at the meeting, and tells her, on tape, “You can count on me for my support.” Ms. Beldini says, “We’ll help each other.”

It is in that clip that Mr. Dwek boasts that he started in the real estate business at 18 and that by 20, already owned 27 houses. He also brags that he has recently moved into the Florida market — perhaps Ms. Beldini or the mayor needs a place in Orlando? — and owns a couple of houses in Miami, one, he crows, with a dock.

Ms. Beldini, too, was in the real estate business — her second job was as a broker — and, at a separate meeting, Mr. Dwek can be heard enticing her with the exclusive representation of his condos. For this, he offers her a sales commission of 5 percent.

Correction: February 3, 2010

An article in some editions on Saturday about testimony in the federal corruption trial of Leona Beldini, the former deputy mayor of Jersey City, misspelled the given name of the mayor of Jersey City, who appears in videos that were introduced as evidence. He is Jerramiah T. Healy, not Jeremiah.

A version of this article appears in print on January 30, 2010, on Page A24 of the New York edition with the headline: Secret Videos Aired in Jersey City Corruption Trial. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe